Controlling the controllables, the key to unorthodox Chanderpaul’s success
Most sportspeople get the chance to immediately put their mistakes right. Nobody remembers, for example, that Andy Murray surrendered a 40-0 lead as he served for his first Wimbledon title in 2013 before eventually overcoming Novak Djokovic. Nor is it now relevant that Sergio Aguero squandered two good goalscoring chances against QPR before stealing the Premier League title in stoppage time for Manchester City in 2012.
Similarly, when Andrew Flintoff dismissed Ricky Ponting with the seventh ball of his ‘Greatest Over’ in the second Ashes Test of 2005, there weren’t many in the feverish Edgbaston crowd ruing the earlier no ball that had forced him to run in again.
Yet had Murray, Aguero, Flintoff or countless others made such telling errors as batsmen – when one faulty piece of footwork, lapse in concentration or slight misjudgement can prove terminal – they might never have had the chance to atone.
It is why, according to Steve Bull, who was the England men’s team psychologist between 1997 and 2014, batting as a sporting discipline is “as close to unique as you can get”.
Bull formed part of the backroom team for the famous Ashes victories in 2005 and 2010/11, but was also present for lows such as the 5-0 reversal Down Under in 2006/07. He knows the intricacies of the game, having witnessed first-hand the effect that they can have on world-class players.
“A slight error of technique and you are out,” says Bull. “One mistake. The margin is so ridiculously small, and the consequences of a mistake are so huge. The knock-on effect is that after two or three low scores, the rest of the mechanisms kick in and the confidence starts to go. It can take you into the abyss,” says Bull. This is not news to Shiv Chanderpaul, a West Indies legend, where flaws are exposed most brutally and scrutiny is most intense. Chanderpaul is the fifth-most capped player in Testmatch history, scoring 11,867 runs over 164 Tests at an average of 51.37, putting him eighth on the list of all-time top run scorers. Yet he was a victim of those same demons.